The dotcom boom created many myths in the online publishing world. Priority was placed on creating large traffic sites with little emphasis on content development strategies. In many cases, the focus on creating traffic and "stickiness" (the ability to retain users) revolved mainly around revenue from advertising. Although this strategy has somewhat changed following the quasi demise of traditional web advertising, it nevertheless remains a strategy focused on established offline products and services. In other words, many online publishing sites have shifted their web strategy to developing user databases for advertisers, or using their sites to battle competitors for greater shares of traditional markets. A good example of this is news organizations. A quick glance at run of the mill news sites will reveal the same content produced offline packaged along with various Internet bells and whistles. There is generally limited effective use of polls, discussion forums and other features beyond simply offering interactivity to their users and supporting their offline products. In other words, the large discussion forums used by these sites are rarely archived and mined for opinion data.

The content provided by discussion forums is unique because it offers a sampling of both opinion data (from a polling perspective) as well as traditional information content, much like a focus group. By comparison, a poll offers little feedback about the thought process of the voter. A published article or column also falls short in that it typically reflects a unique individual or minority opinion rather than a wide range of insights. Another advantage of discussion forums is that the content is usually generated by users rather than publishers.

Discussion forums are the most effective tool for opinion data mining. The content generated in the forum in terms of user discussion can be divided into two categories: Active Content and Archived Content. The success of a forum is never totally guaranteed.

The term "success" refers here to the ability to generate and archive quality discussion and opinion content. This content generated by discussion forum users could be subsequently marketed to researchers, journalists, historians and others as a viable product. To illustrate this concept, imagine a student or journalist in the year 2040 who is conducting research on a specific event, for example the World Trade Center tragedy. Rather than rely simply on video footage, news articles and books published on the topic, a researcher would also access to real conversations from discussion forums and the thoughts, opinions and conversations of individuals living through the event as it took place.

The value of archived discussion forum content is a double-edged sword. While it provides online political activists a method to immortalize their spin initially disseminated into the active forums, the "spun" content often presents researchers with potentially inaccurate or biased content.